marla@Sun.COM (Marla Parker) (07/08/88)
Thanks for the many excellent responses to my inquiry about participating in high school career days in order to encourage young women to consider technical fields. By far the most common suggestion was to check with the local chapter of the Society of Women Engineers. (Now why didn't I think of that?) I called the local president and she took my name to give to the woman who is in charge of organizing the visits to students. Right now she said they only have an informal program, i.e. when schools call them, they provide speakers. However, she said they would like to have a more active outreach program, and when she asked if I'd be willing to help organize it, I of course said yes. Here is a summary of the other interesting responses I got: |From: ucbvax!ames!pacbell!att!whutt!6243mmd (Madeline Dwyer) |There is quite an active program for just that in our local YWCA, |called Career Options Unlimited. It's a long story concerning how |it's run, but it's in conjunction with their TWIN (Tribute to Women |and INdustry) program. The TWIN program is in several YWCAs across |the country, so the high school program may be in progress in those |same areas. This program covers all professional fields so includes |non-technical fields also. I called the YWCA and left my name. Their career program is more or less defunct at the moment, though they'd like to ... She mentioned that the Berkeley branch has an outstanding program. |From: eliz@cs.rochester.edu |In my area the closest thing to a Group would be the Rochester |Women's Business Network & they are not particularly oriented |toward the technical. | |It just occurred to me that infiltrating secretarial classes |would be a great strategy, typing being a prereq for computers |after all (-: |From: Laura D. Bagnall <laura@VX.LCS.MIT.EDU| |I'm not sure whether this is helpful to you or not, but the MIT |Alumnae Association has just such a program. Alumnae (Latin for |female alumni) from MIT visit area (i.e. Boston) high schools |specifically to encourage girls to pursue technical careers. I'm not |sure where you're located, but other local universities may have |similar programs. |From: ka@june.cs.washington.edu (Kenneth Almquist) |Generally these are arranged by companies. For example, if you were |working at AT&T, you would contact the affirmative action coordinator |for your area, who would refer you to whoever was contacting the high |schools. |From: sara%miranda.CRAY.COM@uc.msc.umn.edu (Sara Graffunder) |I saw your news inquiry about going to H.S. career days. There |is a chapter of the Association for Women in Computing in the |Bay area. The president (probably outgoing president right |now) is Cathie Bruce. I don't have a phone number, but the |address is 60 Jersey Street, S.F. 94114. In some cities, the |AWC chapters do activities like going to career days. I |don't know specifically if the S.F. chapter does, but it's |worth a note to them, I'd say. |From: cheryl@tcgould.tn.cornell.edu (cheryl) | |Have you tried contacting a local chapter of SWE (Society of Women Engineers)? | |I can personally attest to the effectiveness of sending technical women |to high schools to encourage high school women to go into engineering, |physics, computing...I was all set to major in biology before women engineers |visited our high school, complete with film clips and personal discussion. | |I think it was sponsored by Bell Labs, not SWE, but I think SWE would be |a good place to start... |From: Cindy Stansbury <cstans@ads.com| |I know the names of two organizations that encourage high school girls to |consider technical fields. One is "Expanding Your Horizons; they put on a |conference every year open to high school Jr.s and Seniors. I've heard of them, through a friend, but haven't had much luck contacting them yet. I have the mail addr of a friend of a friend who might know something, but have yet to contact her. This next response is not really what I had in mind, but I thought it was very interesting. |From: Kent Paul Dolan <kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu| | I'm not sure if this is close enough to what you are looking | for, but the NOAA Corps actively recruits women from | scientific specialties for its officer corps. The recruiter | is a NOAA Corps Officer, more often than not a woman. There | are usually two, and the closer one to you is in Seattle, | Washington. I don't have a number there any more, but if you | tell the operator: Department of Commerce, NOAA (National | Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration), Pacific Marine | Center, the Center operator can connect you with the recruiter | there, who should be able to talk to you about the mechanics | of getting connected with the recruiting field. | | In passing, the NOAA Corps is a terrific job for a woman; lots | of travel, all the responsibilty you can stand, good pay, good | promotion, rock solid EEO, snappy uniform, etc. I don't think | we have an active woman officer senior enough to have been a | ship captain yet, but the latest location roster shows three | as executive officers (second in command of a ship), and I | know several personally who have been chiefs of party or | directors of various offices and divisions. You might want to | check this out as one of the careers you could recommend. | | I hope this helps a bit; I'll give you the full dress .siggie, | so you can tell the recruiter who recommended the contact. | |Kent Paul Dolan, LCDR, NOAA, Retired; ODU MSCS grad student // Yet |UUCP : kent@xanth.UUCP or ...{sun,harvard}!xanth!kent // Another |CSNET : kent@odu.csnet ARPA : kent@xanth.cs.odu.edu \\ // Happy |USPost: P.O. Box 1559, Norfolk, Virginia 23501-1559 \// Amigan! |Voice : (804) 587-7760 -=][| Last one to Ceres is a rotten egg! -=][| |ICBM : 36 53 7 N / 76 18 12 W "Space - the new economic frontier" And finally, I'm quoting this one in full because it is precisely the sort of program I had in mind. |From: williams@src.honeywell.com (Sue Williams) |Honeywell in Minneapolis has had a program like this for about six |years, called Women in Technology and Science (WITS). Basically you |have to contact the schools (math or science department), make arrangements |with the schools, find volunteers and get them signed up. Also you have |to create a lesson plan and give a little training to the volunteers. | |We talk usually to ninth graders, since that is when they are able to |choose/not choose to continue taking math and science when they register |for classes. I could mail you a sample set of viewgraphs if you like. |We spend some time talking about how everyone uses math and science daily, |we talk about our own careers and backgrounds, we talk about college |entrance requirements and show them some example starting salaries, |we talk about how many people change jobs 4 or 5 times in their lives |and have more opportunities if they have the math and science background, |and then we have two things we can do/show for the rest of the period. |We have a statistics experiment that they participate in that demonstrates |the general problem solving method and gets them involved. We also have |a video tape showing numerous women engineers at work at Honeywell, although |I usually run out of time and can't show the whole tape. (You might have |guessed that this program originated as a way to encourage female students |to continue taking math and science. The first year or two we even separated |boys and girls in the class to talk to them--the girls seemed to ask more |questions that way. Now we have deemphasized the female/male aspect of it, |except that it is only women engineers that give the talks. Sort of a |subtle message, role model thing.) | |Anyway, sorry this is dragging out. I don't know who might do this in your |area, but Purdue probably has the Society of Women Engineers, they might |do something like this or might be interested in starting it. I'd be |happy to send you more info if you like on our program. Honeywell is |quite supportive of this program, although I think its kind of win-win for |them--very little investment on their part (a couple person-months of pay, |volunteers spend only a few days each and there is a small committee of |people who do all the other stuff), and it looks good for them and they might |actually be influencing some students. I would really like to start up |some sort of program where working engineers could actually teach 1-12 |math and science classes parttime, but this would require a lot more investment |from the company. Part of me wants to switch to teaching after a few more |years engineering, but the other part of me doesn't want to take the |50% pay cut! Marla Parker {ihnp4, decvax, seismo, decwrl, ...}!sun!marla marla@sun.com
mhnadel@gryphon.cts.com (Miriam Nadel) (07/11/88)
I missed the original article (having been off on a business trip) but I gather Marla wanted advice on high school visiting programs. I've been involved for the past two years in a program sponsored by AMITA (Association of MIT Alumnae), SWE (Society of Women Engineers) and AWIS (American Women in Science); we're being joined by the Caltech Alumni Association in planning for fall visits and Harvey Mudd College has also expressed interest. Our focus has been on visiting inner city schools throughout the Los Angeles area. The usual visit is to a 10th grade math or science class; this is the last year the students are required to take math or science so we're catching them at a critical time. In addition, we've found that younger students aren't thinking yet of the future so tend to pay less attention. Some schools will set up assemblies for girls only which we prefer as the girls tend to ask more questions if there aren't any boys there. Some schools prefer having us talk to their career guidance class (a peculiar California phenomenon) which is less desirable in general. We try to have teams of 3 women visit 2 or 3 classes at a school (essentially 2 hours) and aim to have a balance of professions (still within science/ engineering for the most part) and a balance between married and unmarried women with and without children so we can discuss how people balance career and family. A typical visit involves each member of the team talking for about 10 minutes about her career and how she got where she is. Then we open up the floor to questions and faint from the shock if there are any :-) Usually more questions come from the teachers than from the students. We also try asking the students questions about what they want to do. Talking about money is a good motivator for them too :-). How successful are we? One of my friends from the program saw a news telecast a few months after she had visited a school. The news team was talking to students and asked them what they wanted to do when they "grew up" (a phrase I suspect most high school age kids hate). One girl said she wanted to be a civil engineer and when the newscaster said, "Gee that's an unusual goal for a girl; how did you decide that?" replied that a woman from MIT had visited her school and talked about it. BTW, if anyone in the greater LA area is interested in volunteering, we'll be visiting some schools in the fall and you can send me e-mail for more info on getting involved. Miriam Nadel -- "This letter is meant to impress, not to put him at his ease. We must have long words." -E.C.Bentley mhnadel@gryphon.CTS.COM <any backbone site>!gryphon!mhnadel